The Good Cop season 1, episode 6 recap: ‘Did the TV Star Do It?’
As famous TV personality and comedian Ritchie Knight (Bob Saget) comes under suspicion of murder, members of the team vie for his attention and Tony looks for his big break on The Good Cop.
As the city gears up for a big environmental initiative, trash collecting volunteers find a body in a trash bag dumped by the water. The woman was named Beth Landau and she had worked for Ritchie Knight as a personal assistant for the last three years.
Predictably, everyone but TJ loves Ritchie Knight on The Good Cop. He was the dad on a family sitcom called Welcome Home and now has his own late night talk show.
Beth worked with Ritchie as a research assistant for his memoirs. Her roommate says that she loved her job up until a week ago when she started calling in sick a lot.
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She was on her way to meet Ritchie when she disappeared. TJ has an appointment to talk with Ritchie the next day and Tony asks him to casually ask about his audition tape for the show.
The next day when they interview Ritchie, TJ notices that one of his Emmy awards is missing from his shelf and suggests that it could have been the murder weapon that he had to dispose of, but he says he gave it to charity.
TJ notices scratches on his arm and Beth fingernails had been cut to clean up evidence. Ritchie also gave his new housekeeper the two days off following the murder and she says that when she got back the whole floor was scrubbed clean. There is also a new rug on the floor.
Before they leave an “adjunct detective” arrives who turns out to be Tony trying to finagle a meet with Ritchie. He manages to both sing and dance and leaves his audition tape with Ritchie before everyone leaves.
Later that night, Tony gets a call from Ritchie asking him to be on the show. Tony sings an old standard on the show and shows of his tap dancing. If Tony Danza had been born in a different time he could have been a member of the rat pack. Ritchie asks Tony to be on the show again tomorrow.
Meanwhile, forensics found carpet fibers on Beth’s body that match the model of car that Ritchie drives.
They get a warrant to check the car for DNA, but Ritchie has a segment on his show where he destroys his car, getting Tony to help him douse it with gasoline and set it on fire just before TJ arrives with the warrant.
Ryan and Burl stake out Ritchie’s house and take his garbage when he dumps it. When the team goes through it there are envelopes with each of their names on it with tickets to the show inside.
He’s messing with them. During the show they attend, Tony performs the song My Funny Valentine and Ritchie calls him out for bigotry because of the sexist nature of the song and fires him on air.
Tony admits that TJ was right, Ritchie is the guy. Of course, because he fired Tony on live TV, any attempt to arrest Ritchie would just be seen as personal revenge.
Cora, who is reading the first draft of Ritchie’s memoirs, notices a big gap between his high school years and college. Ritchie has a juvenile record for a drug deal gone bad where some of his friends died of overdoses.
Beth was a good researcher and found out about his secret past, so he killed her. But there’s no evidence – until Burl realizes that every roll of trash bags has a unique oil print pattern that fit together like puzzle pieces. They link the trash bag Ritchie dumped for them to the bag in which they found Beth.
This episode was fun because it gave Tony Danza a chance to be a real showman, show off his singing and dancing skills in a performance setting as opposed to a casual private setting.
His style is very distinctive of the rat pack era of Frank Sinatra and its made clear throughout the series that he has a lot of admiration for him.
This hour is also fun because of the oblique references to guest star Bob Saget, the dad from Full House who plays the dad from Welcome Home. Who would ever believe that Danny Tanner could commit murder?
TJ makes a good point as well. He was the only person not blinded by Ritchie’s charm and fame. He grew up with Tony Caruso and learned early on that a man can be charming and talented but still be guilty.